3 or 5 gallon reef!?!?

[XeniaGirl]

Good evening,
I was reading on another post on here about reef tanks that can be kept as small as 3 or 5 gallons. Do any of you have one? If so, how do you set it up? I'm not going to get one necessarily- and if I do it will be a great while from now - but I guess I just didn't realize that was possible. Would it be FO or FOWLR??? Or even corals???

[ChilisREasy]

i ran a 10 gallon..it done good for about 3 months then slowly died off over 4 more months..but i didnt use a bio-whell filter..if you can find one small enough it should sustain good..but expect to replace livestock often..cause coral will outgrow it fast.

[dobejazz]

I have a 5.5g nano there is a link in my sig to the build thread

[Pinderville]

I have both a 3g FOWLR and a 5g artificial. My 3 was a recent build and I got all my rock, sand and water from a local inlet. It has been up for 2 weeks with great success. The cycle was much faster using all natural resources. My 3 is an Eclipse. Im using it the way it came out of the box.

[Loverotties]

I had a 5 gal. hex 10 yrs ago.

[Wettank]

I did a 6 gallon and 3 gallon eclipse with great success I have since tore them down and got a 24,by the way my filtration was ac 30s with carbon and sponge ill try and dig up pics

[Wettank]

for lighting i used a coralife 12inch 36 watt fixture on the six and a coralife 18 watt for the three

[baum89]

my new 5 gallon hex that i juuuust set up as you can see it has lr, i plan on adding a feeesh and some corals ( most likely shrooms )

[baum89]

oh and its an eclipse meaning it has a bio wheel

[kyrie_eleison]

I have an 8 gallon. Pretty cheap set up too (no biowheel; just a typical filter). It's been running for about...4 months now. It seems outrageous but with the amount of maintenance I do on it (practically every other day 10 to 15% water changes/tests), I've come to the conclusion that all I really need for it is a small power head (for water movement) and my power compact lights. Keep up your water changes (meaning use good quality salt mixture; make sure your pH is between 8.2 and 8.4) and you can't go wrong.

I think a lot of people associate the expression of "nanos are 'hard'." with "nanos are a little more work".

[XeniaGirl]

wow... this is all really interesting. I've seen tiny tanks before but I just assumed that you just had them for tepid water fish or something... I don't have any idea what filtration system or lighting I would do, but this is all great to know!

[madscientist]

I have a 5.5gal with a hob filter with the heater in there. No filter in the filter, but it works great to keep the surface aggitated. 2 24w pc lights, and 1 gallon water changes with catalina ocean water from petco every week and things look great. It has been up for about 8 mos now and everything that started as frags are almost twice the size. I have this at my desk at work, and it will be my growout tank for frags to go into my 65 gallon.

Oh, yeah and it is much easier to do 1 gallon water changes than 15 gallon changes. I like nano.

[YLChik]

do any of you with 5 g and under keep fish in them? if so what kinds and how many?

[dobejazz]

Originally Posted by YLChik

do any of you with 5 g and under keep fish in them? if so what kinds and how many?

Amy I have a tiny Filemented Wrasse in my 5.5 I do have larger tanks if I need to move him eventually though

[madscientist]

I keep a single false perc clown. I also have a larger home when he gets uncomfortable.